Round Trip Fare Read online

  »»•««

  Her teacher had at least one secret, a big one. A few months after Marley arrived, Carey was hopping to the bathroom on her crutches late at night when she heard a noise from Connor’s room. Her knock went unanswered, and she was about to turn away when she heard the moaning. “Connor?” She opened the door and saw him on the floor. In the light spilling in from the hallway, he was pale, sweating, eyes closed. “Connor!”

  “No! Stay back. Hurt…you…”

  “I’ll get help. Connor, hang on.”

  Whirling she started for the door and tripped over the crutches. Snarling, she tossed them away and ripped off the Velcro straps holding the sides of the soft cast that had replaced the plaster just the week before. Her ankle hurt but bore her weight as she hobbled to Marley’s house in search of Harry. She banged on the door and without waiting for an answer, twisted the knob.

  Inside she saw Harry and Marley, both fully dressed, bending over a table covered with maps.

  “Connor…needs help… Hurry.”

  Marley raced out. Harry came over, scooped her up, and followed. She didn’t miss that he stopped to lock the door behind them. By the time they reached his room, Connor was sitting on his bed, nodding to something Marley was saying. She stared at her brother. What did Marley do, and how could she do it so fast? She was no closer to figuring out Marley than she’d ever been. But maybe Connor knew…

  Connor gave her an embarrassed grin, but ignored the questions in her eyes. “Hey, Midget. What happened to your cast?”

  “Hey, Moron. What happened to your brain?”

  »»•««

  Harry and Marley were gone, and Connor was in bed. Carey, wrapped in a blanket, came back in and curled up on the battered leather sofa facing his bed. With two exceptions, his room was the opposite of hers. Pale—and matching—blue walls held shelves of books, a stereo, and stacks of CDs. His homework books shared desk space with a computer keyboard and large monitor. Above his bed was a poster-size satellite picture of Bainbridge Island. But the two frames next to his bed held the same Halloween picture and drawing of Gaby that were in her room.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded, fiddling with a yarn bracelet on his wrist. “What does your gift give when you fight?” His low voice was intent.

  Damn. He’s not going to tell me what just happened. Okay, we’ll do this his way. “Hard to explain. Marley told me to picture a chess board, only with lots of levels. I can see the level I’m fighting on, but there are…connections to what might be happening—or going to happen, or already happened—on the other levels. I use those connections to tell me what move to make.”

  Connor thought about it for a moment and nodded. “I guess mine isn’t that much different.” He pointed to the pieces of braided yarn tied around his wrist. As part of their sister Gaby’s quest for cheap entertainment, she had once taken them to Pioneer Days near their home on Bainbridge Island in Seattle’s Puget Sound. After each of them tried spinning wool into yarn, Carey braided the three wobbly, bumpy strands into the bracelet her brother had worn ever since.

  “When I touch someone, the connection I feel is like a long piece of this yarn. It starts smooth, like someone cut it with a scissors. I can look down the string, and usually there will be lumps, sometimes even bits so thin you’d think it would break. Most of the time, that string goes way off into the future, although the end does get thinner and thinner again until it breaks. I used to think it was telling me how long people would live. But you remember Alan from my soccer team? Even though his thread was long and thick, he still drowned at the beach that summer. And Mrs. Jenner, our fifth grade teacher? She had a great thread too, but she died when her car went off the road. So now I wonder if it’s how long a person might have to live, but not how long they actually do.”

  “Weird.” Carey grunted as Connor came over to the sofa and bumped her good shoulder with his until she made room for him. “So what does my thread look like?”

  He pulled the unused half of her blanket over himself. “Given how often you do something stupid that ends you up in the hospital, it’s about as uneven as anyone who knows you would expect. It goes way off into the future, but it’s full of thick parts followed by parts that get scary thin and look like they could break.” He stopped and shook his head. “But you want to hear the really weird thing?”

  At her nod, he spoke slowly, as if he still couldn’t believe his own words. “When we were waiting at Null City for the Metro to take us, I checked out a bunch of the people there. The guy who said he was a demon had a string that went on forever in both directions. Most people’s threads are soft colors like red or blue or green, but on this one, the first part of it was silver, thick and perfectly straight. Then way back, it changed to gold and kept going just as thick. But some of the Null City people had two strings. One would have the normal colors, and bumps, and thinning. But the other would be long and straight and just go on forever.

  “But the reason I was…in trouble…tonight was that I was trying to read Marley and Harry’s threads. Harry starts silver, but that turns into normal bumpy colored string. He has a gold one wound around it that goes on forever, but the normal one stops like it was cut with a scissors. And Carey?” Connor shivered. “I think Harry’s normal string stops pretty soon.”

  Carey stared at him in shock, but he wasn’t done.

  “And Marley? I got…lost…when I tried to reach her. She had to talk me back.” He stopped and shook his head. “Marley doesn’t have a string. She’s just…empty. Waiting.”

  Chapter Three

  2003: St. Helens Ranch, Eastern Washington State

  On Marley’s door, the lock’s tumblers hit the shear line with a satisfying click. Carey grinned. Breaking and entering was one of her little hobbies that Harry frowned on. She’d lost track of the times he’d confiscated her lock picks. Or the times she’d stolen them back.

  She’d been awake most of the night before, thinking about what Connor told her about Harry and Marley’s life strings, thinking about the maps, thinking about a plan. So after school, she waited until Marley left for the barn with Connor, and then she went to work on the lock. As an agent of the Gifts during the Nonwars, her father’s harmonia abilities with anything mechanical had made him unsurpassed at getting past any lock. After he was injured, Dad opened a locksmith business on Bainbridge Island in Seattle’s Puget Sound. Carey didn’t remember him very well, but Gaby taught the twins everything she’d learned from Dad. Well, she taught Carey, but Connor never did get the hang of it.

  When Marley returned, Carey was sitting on her doorstep reading The Art of War, her sixteenth-birthday present from Harry. “It’s unlocked.” She closed the book and looked up at Marley. “I didn’t go in, but I wanted you to know that I could.”

  Marley nodded and went inside without waiting to see if Carey followed. There was no sign of the maps. Marley waved at the empty table. “If you can tell me where they are, I’ll tell you what they’re for.”

  Carey just stared.

  “Come on, pull on those connections. Imagine this is a fight, just like throwing one of your darts.”

  “Shuriken.” Carey cleared her throat, then closed her eyes. “My throwing stars and darts are called shuriken.” She tried concentrating. As usual, even when she could sense the connection to Marley, she rarely knew what the next step should be. Wait, Harry was there too. Why Harry? Her connection built up her favorite image of Harry on the next level of her game board. Not the beautiful medieval saint, but the man, dark gold hair flying, eyes laughing as he sparred with her. His silver-chased knife would be on the chair in the corner, a promised reward for the day she finally beat him. She loved Harry, but she needed to win his knife like she needed oxygen.

  He had learned to fight in a very dirty school, and he taught her never to depend on a particular style or discipline, but to always fight dirty and battle to win. He never spared her, and she still hadn’t gotten that knife.
r />   Once she had complained that he didn’t fight with the honor that Master Park always stressed during her training. Harry had just smiled as he pressed a bag of ice to her sore wrist. “Someone told me once that you don’t have to end the fight looking pretty.” He put an arm around her. “You just have to end it prettier than the other guy. Never fight if you can walk away. And if you can’t walk away, fight as dirty as you can until you win.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  Harry’s grin flashed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  She smiled at the memory and then frowned. What was Harry’s connection? It was no secret that he was looking for Luic and Gaby, so it couldn’t be that. Show me, Harry. What were you were doing here with Marley? Another image, this time a memory, slid next to Harry in her mind. It was four years ago, give or take a quarter-century time jump, and another world. The five of them—her sister Gaby with her employer/lover Luic, Connor and herself, and Harry—were in a pancake house near Mount St. Helens in Washington, the night before Gaby and Luic disappeared. Harry had been saying something to Gaby about the war between the Gifts and Haven.

  He waited impatiently while a waitress put a plate of pancakes in front of each of them. “Basically, Gaby, we need your help because Haven—or whoever is pulling their strings—is winning. There are three pivotal points in time which we believe will determine the outcome of the war. The first of those pivot points is a task you and a few others have to perform. Even if you’re successful, it won’t win the war for us. But it will keep us from losing, and every time we do that we get closer to actually winning in the end. No, we won’t be saving the world. In fact most of them will never hear about this. But if we lose, Null City will be destroyed and Gifts by the thousands will die.”

  She opened her eyes and grinned at Marley. “Harry’s trying to protect Null City. He’s going after the second pivot point himself. And he knew I’d be part of it, so those maps will be where I would hide them. Where is your underwear drawer?”

  »»•««

  Harry and Connor had joined them in Marley’s cottage. Now her guardian smiled at her. “You broke into Marley’s house?” He could have been asking about something on the shopping list.

  But you don’t spar with someone for four years without studying him, and Carey was an expert on all things Harry. Her answering smile showed her teeth. “I remember that night at the pancake house. Every word.”

  He didn’t look surprised. “So you remember me telling Luic and Gaby that long ago, I was an…assistant…to a great prince—some called him Archangel Raziel—who wanted to help humans by making them a Book to restore the knowledge they had lost. It didn’t…go well, and we were punished for eons.” For a moment something ancient gazed out of his bleak eyes, something that didn’t look like Harry at all. “The Book Raziel gave to the humans is what Luic and Gaby went to help save. We think that was the first of three tests, a pivot point that determines the path of the future. We have to capture those tests if we’re going to keep Null City from being destroyed.”

  “Angels.” Carey remembered Gaby’s stunned words. “Gaby said you set her up on the opposite side of angels.” But even at the time, Carey remembered thinking, “Harry is an angel too. Or at least he used to be one.”

  Carey thought about the city her mother’s family helped to found as a refuge for those with different gifts and abilities who just wanted to live normal human lives. An unbroken string, mother-to-daughter in her mother’s line were the city’s Anchors. Her own parents had fought for their City, and they died for it. Gaby and Luic had disappeared into the past on the Metro, trying to win their test and save Null City. She and Connor had only been twelve the day they met Harry. The day he saved them from two armed attackers. But even then she had known she needed to train as harmonia warrior.

  “I know—Connor and I have always known—that there is a test for us. Our family founded Null City, and for some reason we’re supposed to keep defending it. But you have to understand. I only want to either find out what happened to Gaby or to punish anyone who hurt her.”

  If she hadn’t been the greatest living authority on Harry, Carey would have missed the hesitation before he answered her. “I think the next test and what happened to your sister is connected.”

  “Are you sure we should go for the next pivot point before we know what happened with the first one?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know what happened to the Book Gaby and Luic were searching for. That means now we have to protect Raziel so he can make another copy of his Book of Divine Knowledge. I believe that’s the next test.”

  “Harry, you know why I’ve been training all these years. And it wasn’t to play bodyguard for some angel. Present company excepted.”

  He looked frustrated. “We can’t afford to lose the second pivot. Marley and I have been tracking some sightings—rumors, mostly—on the maps you saw. I’m the one who knows him best, so I have to be the one to find Raziel.”

  She looked at him. “There’s something you’re still not telling me.”

  When Harry didn’t answer, Carey looked from Connor—who shook his head—to Marley, who smiled tightly and gave her a tiny nod.

  Right, then. Carey pulled on all the connections she could reach. Her memory of Gaby. Luic and Harry. Marley. Connor. Connor! She hissed in a breath. “You think something’s going to happen to Connor. And…and me.”

  “No!” Harry shook his head. Too quickly. “I promised Gaby I’d take care of you both, and I will keep doing just that. You’ll be safe here at the ranch with Simeon and Marley. And there are three new Leftfeet starting next week. But I have to find Raziel.”

  Carey looked at Marley. “Would you excuse us?”

  Marley’s complete lack of any superfluous motion translated to an innate elegance Carey knew she’d never match as the teacher stood and headed for the door. “Make yourselves at home. My dinner is in the fridge, and my wallet’s on the bedside table. Help yourself to my bathrobe and slippers.”

  “Just because I can break in doesn’t mean I would.”

  Carey waited until Marley left. “Who is Marley Trenton?”

  Harry looked a bit sheepish. “We thought it would be better if everyone thought she was here as my girlfriend. But you know she’s here to train Connor. You too, of course.”

  Connor nodded. “Yeah, we got that. So what aren’t you telling us?”

  Harry smiled. “Do you remember the day we took the Metro train together after Gaby and Luic left?”

  Carey and Connor both shuddered. None of them were likely to forget it. Their only warning that they weren’t headed back to Seattle had been a recorded announcement to “mind the gap” as the train traveled between temporal destinations. Harry barely had time to hand them each a bag labeled “For motion sickness. Mind the Gap.” She’d thought the Metro was going to kill them as it plunged and shuddered, wheels scraping and metal screaming. She had screamed too. She remembered thinking that nothing could withstand that pressure, but Harry’s arms were around both her and Connor, as he promised them, over and over, that it was going to be okay. Finally the train shuddered to a halt, and they stepped off into a Seattle that was twenty-five years older than the one they left.

  She remembered so clearly. Harry faced both devastated twins, one hand on each of their shoulders, speaking every word like it held an entire prayer. “We are all going to be fine. I promised Gaby, and I’m promising each of you. We’ll belong to each other.” And just like that, Carey gave him her heart.

  Now she bumped against his shoulder. “Yeah, I remember.”

  Harry put an arm around her. “Well, here’s the thing. The second pivot? It’s supposed to be your test, not mine. But we still don’t know what happened to Gaby and Luic. The Metro isn’t working most of the time, and we can’t wait any longer. I’m going after the second pivot.”

  “We know. Connor and I have always known there was something we were supposed to do. It�
�s why you worked so hard on our training, why you brought the Leftfeet and Marley in. But Harry, it’s not your pivot point. And Connor and I? We’re only sixteen. We don’t even have driver’s licenses yet. We’re just not ready to go after it.”

  Harry’s arm around each twin pulled them close again, briefly. “I’m not your father or your brother or even your uncle. I didn’t know you as babies. But Gaby left you with me. You are both mine to protect. Mine. That makes the task mine.”

  When Marley returned, Carey and Connor were helping Harry spread out the maps. It wasn’t until much later that Carey realized Harry had never really answered her question about Marley.

  As Harry and Marley went over the clues they were following, Carey studied them. Harry was back in what Carey privately labeled his medieval saint mode, each word and gesture pared to its bare minimum. Marley stood next to him, watchful and serenely beautiful. Her high cheekbones, smooth gold hair, and absolute stillness seemed familiar. As she bent over a map to point out something to Harry, Carey froze. Why did Marley remind her of Harry? She’d heard that couples who were very close could start to resemble each other. Did that apply to Marley and Harry? What did they even know about her?

  Harry had once been an angel. But Connor saw his thread as silver and then gold winding around a colored string. What happened to Marley’s string? Maybe her question should have been, what is Marley Trenton?

  Carey caught Connor’s unfocused gaze, a sure sign he was trying to read the emotions of the other two. She widened her eyes in a question, along with the tiniest flick of her head toward the two adults. Connor frowned a few more minutes, and then turned back to her with a small shrug and barely visible head shake. Nothing.